Milford Street Captive Insurance, an association captive formed to insure affordable housing in New York, publishes an analysis of legal claims filed against residential rental properties in New York City showing claims grew sharply between 2021 and 2023 before settling at that higher level. The analysis was conducted by LegalClaimsAI and the NYU Furman Center, which matched a data set of 56,289 claims filed against New York City properties between 2021 and 2025. Researchers analysed 21,992 of those claims, filed against 18,745 residential rental buildings comprising 916,207 units. Total claims filed citywide grew 29.6 per cent from 2021 to 2022 and a further 29.2 per cent from 2022 to 2023, before levelling off and declining slightly through 2025. On a per-unit basis, claims per 100,000 units grew 69.6 per cent between 2021 and 2024, from 128.69 to 218.32, easing to 200.3 in 2025. The researchers sorted buildings into eight categories, including market-rate, government-subsidised and income-restricted, mixed-income, public housing, Mitchell-Lama and three tiers of legacy rent-stabilised housing. Buildings that are at least 90 per cent rent-stabilised recorded the highest peak rate at 289 claims per 100,000 units in 2024, followed by government-subsidised, income-restricted buildings at 256 in 2023. Market-rate buildings peaked at 161 in 2024. The least rent-stabilised tier, at up to 35 per cent, peaked at 158 in 2023, below the market-rate figure. Premises claims outpaced other categories overall. On a per-unit basis, public housing, government-subsidised and income-restricted housing and heavily rent-stabilised buildings consistently recorded higher rates of premises claims than market-rate and mixed-income buildings. The sharpest shift was in tort and negligence claims within government-subsidised, income-restricted housing, where the per-unit rate grew 61.82 per cent from 2022 to 2023 and a further 57.48 per cent from 2023 to 2024, from a smaller base. The Bronx and Brooklyn recorded the highest total claim volumes, with the Bronx posting the highest rate per unit, peaking at 253.42 claims per 100,000 units in 2024 against a peak of 151.7 in Brooklyn. Brooklyn recorded the highest annual totals from 2023 onwards, reaching 1,695 claims in 2024. Milford Street was created by a group of affordable housing developers and managers seeking relief from rising insurance costs. Membership requires properties to hold a regulatory agreement and to have received a subsidy from a city, state or federal housing finance agency. John A Crotty of Milford Street says: "Unchecked litigation is an existential threat to affordable housing. Not surprisingly, where government investment is the highest so is the rate of claims." Keith Minella, chief executive officer of LegalClaimsAI, says: "We are a disruptive technology that mines data embedded in court filings for a range of application that include public benefits, such as affordable housing and uncompensated care provided by hospitals. It is rewarding to see the results, and we hope they are helpful to policymakers in making more informed decisions."
